Despite a “stormy” Toronto Zoo board meeting, the zoo’s three elephants are on track to be shipped south this April.

City council voted last month to keep pushing ahead with sending the zoo’s aging elephants — Iringa, Toka and Thika — to the PAWS animal sanctuary in California. The decision came despite objections from zoo staff and more than a year after council voted to send the pachyderms packing.

Meeting for the first time since council reaffirmed the elephant decision, zoo board members tussled but didn’t try to reverse council’s order.

Zoo board chairman Joe Torzsok said the move will go ahead in the spring.

“All parties, working co-operatively, have agreed to move them as soon as safely possible and that appears to be this spring,” Torzsok said. “Moving an elephant, not to mention three at once, is a massive undertaking. The zoo, the city and PAWS all agree that a spring move is the best and safest option.”

During Wednesday’s meeting, Councillor Gloria Lindsay Luby, who is against the move, got in a verbal dust-up with Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, who supports sending the elephants to PAWS.

The zoo board was warned that staff could lose their veterinary licences if they send the animals to PAWS. That prompted De Baeremaeker to suggest the zoo’s vets should quit if they feel they are doing something “unethical.”

“I said any person in any job who thinks they are doing something unethical should resign,” De Baeremaeker said.

He dismissed the argument zoo staff are being told to do something they don’t support.

“People do that every day in their jobs,” he said. “Everybody has a boss and everybody is told by their boss what they are going to do and if you don’t like it, you leave.”

De Baeremaeker’s suggestion got a screaming rebuke from Lindsay Luby.

“I started to scream at that point and said, ‘How could you say that? These people have given 30 years service to this zoo and you’re telling them to resign? You should resign.’ It went down from there,” Lindsay Luby said.

The zoo board approved a motion thanking veterinary staff for their work and urging them not to resign, plus a motion agreeing the elephants would only be moved on a pressurized plane.

Lindsay Luby said she’s convinced most of the board is unhappy with having to move the elephants.

“It’s a crazy way to run a zoo,” she said, adding the zoo can’t reverse the decision to move the elephants because “council rules supreme.

Toronto elephants on track for April departure

Despite a “stormy” Toronto Zoo board meeting, the zoo’s three elephants are on track to be shipped south this April.

City council voted last month to keep pushing ahead with sending the zoo’s aging elephants — Iringa, Toka and Thika — to the PAWS animal sanctuary in California. The decision came despite objections from zoo staff and more than a year after council voted to send the pachyderms packing.

Meeting for the first time since council reaffirmed the elephant decision, zoo board members tussled but didn’t try to reverse council’s order.

Zoo board chairman Joe Torzsok said the move will go ahead in the spring.

“All parties, working co-operatively, have agreed to move them as soon as safely possible and that appears to be this spring,” Torzsok said. “Moving an elephant, not to mention three at once, is a massive undertaking. The zoo, the city and PAWS all agree that a spring move is the best and safest option.”